Stories of family and ancestors who lived and worked in Cohoes (textile and garment workers, butchers and barbers), Waterford (canalers), Whitehall (farmers and canalers), Port Henry (iron miners and Civil War soldiers), Champlain (canalers and farmers) and other towns along the Champlain Canal in New York State with some diversions to the places they emigrated from....Quebec (landless farmers, shoemakers, sailors, soldiers), Acadia (more farmers), and even Cornwall, England (tin miners).

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Today I am reviewing some the the L'or or Lord lines in our families and found a void. A real void, that is, there is an empty space where there should be writing. A parish register from "The Registers of St.Jean-Baptiste, Port Royal, 1702-1755 has the name "Julien L'or" written in the left hand margin but there is absolutely no writing! For those researchers familiar with the style and format of the French Catholic parish registers of Quebec and Acadia, this is a glaring error. For those reading this story who are unfamiliar with this format, I can only tell you that the dear Cure Charlemagne Cuvier may have tied one on the night before. The empty section occurs between the 17th of February and the 3rd of May, 1724. It must have been a long winter!

Who was Julien L'or anyway? Julien was an early habitant in Acadia, not one of the earliest but he arrived before 1675, probably from France and may have been in Quebec before his arrival in Acadia. Besides being the progenitor of the Lord family, he was a 6th great grandfather of Al, Claire and Ray Rivet and through a marriage also an ancestor of Dorothy Wills. He was born about 1652 and married Anne-Charlotte Girouard about 1675. Julien and Anne-Charlotte had nine children and the Rivets descend from two of those children, Pierre L'or and Marguerite L'or. Al, Claire and Raymond Rivet's grandmother was Marie Lord, daughter of Solomon Lord, born in St. Jacques de l'Achigan in 1854.

Julien L'or and Anne-Charlotte lived and raised their family on the western side of the River Dauphin, slightly northwest and across the river from Port Royal. In the 1686 census of Port Royal Julien and Anne-Charlotte are listed as 33 and 26 years old with 4 children: Alexandre 10, Jacques 8, Pierre 5, and Marie 1 year old. Cattle and sheep are not enumerated on their entry. On this map, you can find their domain:

and the detail...

It is possible that Julien was buried in the cemetery of the church of St Jean Baptiste in Port Royal, present day Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. With a blank entry, who knows exactly what occurred to Julien when he died. Could he have drown in the River Dauphin and his body never found?

In July, I had an opportunity to walk through the oldest section of the St. John Baptiste cemetery guided by Alan Melanson on the Acadian Ancestral Tour. Julien L'or's remains may have been close by and under our footsteps....even though he has a blank entry in the place where his burial should be recorded!

Here is the line from Claire, Al and Ray Rivet, siblings born in Cohoes NY between 1916 and 1922, who were the children of:

Paul Emile Rivet 1880-1961, born in St Jacques de l'Achigan, son of

Marie Lord , 1854-1914, born in St Jacques de l'Achigan, daughter of

Solomon Lord, 1827-1913, born in St Jacques de l'Achigan, son of

Louis Thaddee Lord, 1784-1858, born in St Jacques de l'Achigan, son of

Jean Baptiste Lord dit Talaron, born 1761 in exile in Connecticut Colony, son of

Friday, August 19, 2016

Six years ago I started writing about the Acadian Ancestors in the three families I research most intensely - the Mylott family of Waterford & Whitehall New York, the Rivet family of Cohoes New York, and the Wills family of upstate New York, Cornwall and Quebec. In the past six years I have learned a lot about them through reading & researching and getting help from a special lady, Lucie LeBlanc Consentino, who hosts the website Acadian Ancestral Home. Thanks to Lucie and her sharing, I think I'm able to explain to others and to myself the story of these ancestors with some accuracy and confidence. It is a big story and vast history involving Acadian families being pushed and pulled across the globe and throughout the English, French and Spanish colonies of the mid 18th century. For me personally, it is a history that brought the ancestors of the Rivets, Mylotts and Wills together 200 years before Al Rivet, Claire Rivet, Ray Rivet, Arthur Mylott, and Dorothy Wills came together in the working class neighborhoods of Cohoes and Waterford, New York. For this reason, the story of the Acadians in my families will always be the centerpiece of my family's genealogy. Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry who married about 1642 and a founding couple of Acadia, are common ancestors of Al Rivet, Claire Rivet, Ray Rivet, Arthur Mylott and his siblings (Milo and Edgar), and Dorothy Wills and all her siblings (Celina, Julia, Anna, John, Elizabeth, Muriel Etta, Larry and Robert). The Rivet family emigrating from St Jacques de l'Achigan and the environs of Joliette, Quebec certainly have an overwhelming number of Acadian ancestors who resettled in this areas after the exile. Some Mylott and Rivet ancestors were thrust together on the journey and drama of "The Pembroke". Some Wills ancestors were exiled to the port of Boston where the dying words of our 6th great grandmother, Jeanne Hebert, were recorded by Timothy Hutchinson, a later governor of Massachusetts colony, in 1755.*

FrancoAmerican Gravy & Lucie LeBlanc Consentino
on tour July 2016

During July 2016, I was fortunate to be able to travel with Luce's Acadian Ancestral Tour for a week to historical sites, memorials, museums, churches, rivers, shores with Fundy tides that are a part of Acadian history. This included locations in present day New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. The bonus was traveling with 40+ Acadian cousins who are all lovers of genealogy and history - especially Acadian genealogy and history. Planning and preparation for the tour started more than one year before with Sandra Goodwin of Maple Starts and Stripes and Lucie researching sites and securing the travel services of Fred Clark. Forty plus adults and one easy going teenager had the trip of a lifetime! Merci and thanks to everyone. Soon, I hope to post some of the photos I took and reflections I felt during this amazing tour.

A quiet moment inside the Magical Mystery Tour Bus

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far. This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

Pages

“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. 1927.

Reading this Blog....

...may not seem particularly easy. I post information and stories in whatever sequence comes to me and sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I may post about someone and three weeks later write about them again. In between the two posts, there may be stories about other people or places. That is why there is a search button at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Email me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com